Comfort and Joy Comes Later

…this snowflake generation of ours, we have outlawed any real communication of the bad news. This means that the good news (as it is found in Scripture) becomes contextually nonsensical. We are found peddling cures in a world without diseases, offering pardons in a world without justice, and preaching resurrections in a world without death. One is reminded of Niebuhr’s great summary of liberalism: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” And in this shrewd summary, we see just how far the leprosy of liberalism has already advanced in ostensibly evangelical circles.

…Christians today have largely gotten the idea that evangelism is some churchy form of salesmanship. Because of this, the customer is always right—and we are living in a time when many of the “customers” spend a great deal of time feeling sorry for themselves. We are no longer doctors, delivering an unwanted but life-preserving message, but rather salesmen, hawking an unwanted product, one that is ill-suited to the impulse purchases of narcissists. And because the product is unwanted (because there is no awareness of any bad news needed), we start trying to create other incentives for the purchase. We do this by decorating our message with various lusts. The central lust we are currently using—and which works well on snowflakes and feminists—is the lust for affirmation and flattery.

…so it is that a gospel preached by snowflakes is incapable of offering snowflakes what they so desperately need—which is to get over themselves. This is because the best way to get over yourself is to see your ramshackle self hauled off in shame and disgrace to be nailed to the same cross where Jesus died.